Inventory Levels in Greater Hartford

We’ve been showing a lot of houses over the past few weeks. And it seems like there just isn’t anything out there for buyers. What do the inventory levels of single family homes in various towns in the Hartford area tell us? All of the data used to develop this chart came from the CT Multiple Listing Service and is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. We looked at the number of homes currently for sale

The Offer Process

Recently I had a client ask me how long the offer process takes and then apologize for asking me what they considered a dumb question. First, I’d like to say that there really are no dumb questions in real estate, as with just about anything else in life. It’s only dumb to not ask the question in the first place. Unfortunately for HGTV watchers, the offer process is not really at all like how the

Buyers + ??? = Deals

We just got back from the Tuesday broker’s open house tour in West Hartford. It’s always fun to see the new listings and talk with the other agents about what is going on in the market. One of the common themes right now seems to be that there are more buyers actively looking for homes than there are sellers. Many agents reported having trouble finding homes that their buyer clients are interested in purchasing. We

Remodeling Cost versus Value

The November 2009 issue of Remodeling Magazine included the 22nd edition of their annual report about the financial impact of various home improvement projects. They look at both midrange and upscale projects, and hit on all the major renovations, calculating the percentage of the cost that could be recovered in a sale. Data is broken down by region and even by major cities within a region. I was excited to discover that Hartford is one

Getting Sellers to Pay Your Closing Costs

In more than half of the buyer transactions I represented last year, my buyer clients decided to ask the sellers to pay a portion or all of their closing costs. We’ve talked about Financing Closing Costs before. Some buyers ask sellers to cover these costs for them, as the buyer is trying to maximize their downpayment or conserve the amount of cash they will have left over after the transaction. Deciding to ask a seller